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Migrants find refuge ‘north of the middle of nowhere’

Hundreds of migrants adapt to life in emergency shelters in Norway’s High North.

Afghan asylum seeker Roheek Yausofi waits his turn for food cooked on an open fire, with fish caught the day before by his father, on the island of Seiland, northern Norway, on Feb. 2. (Alastair Grant / AP)

By Karl RitterThe Associated Press

Wed., Feb. 17, 2016

HAMMERFEST, NORWAY—After hiding below the horizon for two long months, the sun has finally risen in Hammerfest, casting a pale pink hue over the Arctic landscape surrounding the world’s northernmost refugee shelter.

From her modest room, Huda al-Haggar admires the wonderland of snow and ice, a sight so different from her native Yemen, where a Saudi airstrike destroyed her home, forcing her to flee with her young son.

“It’s wonderful when I wake up in the morning and see this picture, the sea and the mountains. It’s a wonderful place,” the young woman says as 5-year-old Omar plays with Lego on her lap.

Waiting for their asylum claims to be processed, hundreds of people in emergency shelters in Hammerfest and neighbouring towns are slowly getting used to the extreme climate and unfamiliar customs of the High North.

Hammerfest, northern Norway, is home to the world's northernmost refugee shelter. After thousands of migrants entered the country through Russia, Norwegian authorities quickly set up migrant shelters in small towns separated by vast tracks of untouched wilderness.
(Alastair Grant)

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They say they have adapted to the cold — the temperature rarely drops below -10C along the coast, though it gets much colder further inland. It’s the darkness that throws them off.

Rami Saad, a 23-year-old Syrian from Damascus with a neatly groomed beard and tight slacks, says workers at the Hammerfest centre warned him about the polar night but he didn’t believe them until late November, when “suddenly there was no sun.”

The lack of daylight messed up his body clock, like the day when he rolled out of bed at 11 and ambled to the cafeteria to have lunch.

“But there was nobody there,” Saad says, giggling. “It was 11 p.m.”

Few of the asylum-seekers expected to end up here, 460 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, when they left their homelands in the Middle East, Africa and Asia to escape violence, poverty, forced marriages or armies they didn’t want to join.

Huda al Haggar says “It’s wonderful when I wake up in the morning and see this picture, the sea and the mountains.” She and her son Omar fled Saudi airstrikes in her native Yemen. (Alastair Grant)

Some were relocated by Norwegian authorities after entering the country from Sweden in the south. Others blazed a new trail into Western Europe by first entering Russia and then crossing its Arctic border with Norway.

More than 5,000 people, mostly Syrians and Afghans, used that route last year before the government tightened the border in November and started deporting those who were not deemed to be in need of protection in Norway.

Though that’s just a trickle compared to the one million people who entered Europe last year from the south across the Mediterranean Sea, it forced Norwegian authorities to quickly set up migrant shelters in small towns separated by vast tracks of untouched wilderness.

The 36 asylum-seekers staying in a lodge on the remote Seiland island, all but one from Afghanistan, seem surprisingly at ease. Lodge owner Stig Erland Hansen and manager Paal Mannsverk say it’s because they try to keep them active: fishing, chopping wood, sledding, skiing, and hiking instead of just sitting around waiting for a decision by the Norwegian Immigration Directorate, which can take more than a year.

For most asylum seekers in Norway's High North, the cold is bearable — the temperature rarely drops below -10C near the coast. It's the darkness that's the challenge. (Alastair Grant)

The camp on Seiland is a far cry from the crowded and jaillike migrant centres in some parts of Europe. Afghan children laugh and holler as they sled down the slope from the camp to the rocky shoreline, where men speaking Dari rinse fish caught in the icy fiord.

Later, as the sun drops behind the mountains, they will cook them over an open fire with onion, tomatoes, eggs and spices brought in from the mainland.

To some the contrast with the life they left behind is almost surreal.

“I was in Afghanistan, a country far away from here and now I’m in the north of Norway. I could never have imagined this,” says 20-year-old Zakria Sedequi.

He says he fled Afghanistan’s Maidan Wardak province after the Taliban tried to recruit him. An ugly scar over his left eyebrow suggests they didn’t ask nicely. Sedequi says they rammed the butt of a Kalashnikov rifle into his forehead. He documented the bloody mess with his cellphone camera.

Stig Erland Hansen, centre, returns from a fishing trip with asylum seekers who show off their catch on the island of Seiland, northern Norway. (Alastair Grant)

A handful of young men who were transferred to Seiland decided this wasn’t the place for them, packed up their belongings and asked to be taken ashore. Some went back to Russia, where they had been studying. A couple travelled all the way to Italy, says Mannsverk.

By the spring, the lodge will go back to its regular tourist business and the asylum-seekers will have to be transferred elsewhere, perhaps to permanent asylum centres like the one in Alta. The city of 20,000 has years of experience with integrating asylum-seekers into the local community.

The staff at the Hero asylum centre in Alta try to prepare the newcomers for life in Norway by teaching them local customs, including how to treat women, a subject given particular attention after reports of mass sex assaults blamed on migrants in Germany on New Year’s eve.

“Norwegian women can drink alcohol and be loud just like men. This is completely normal in Norwegian society,” says Ingunn Soergaard, a petite woman with waist-length hair and a crystal-white smile.

Arzoo Abdul Hakim holds a freshly caught cod fish as he chases other children round the temporary Altnes camp refugee camp on the island of Seiland. (Alastair Grant)

Her audience of 18 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, look at her with bewilderment. Not because they think it’s weird that Norwegian women drink, but that Soergaard thinks they don’t know that.

“We’ve seen that on TV. And we know that’s how it is here. It’s not an issue,” says Anod al-Ali, a 31-year-old teacher from Syria.

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